"It was the same way with those people from Pennsylvania," said Rhetta.

"We had a crowd of Pennsylvania Dutch out here a week or two after the Mennonites," the judge enlarged, "smellin' around hot-foot on the trail as hounds, but this atmosphere of Ascalon and its bad influence on the country wouldn't be good for their young folks, they said. So _they_ backed off. And that's the way it's gone, that's the way it will go. The blight of Ascalon falls over this country for fifty miles around, the finest country the Almighty ever scattered gra.s.s seed over.

"You saw the possibilities of it from a distance, Mr. Morgan; others have seen it. Wouldn't you be doing humanity a larger service, a more immediate and applicable service, by clearing away the pest spot, curing the repulsive infection that keeps them away from its benefits and rewards, than by plowing up eighty acres and putting in a crop of wheat?

A man's got to trample down his bed-ground, as I've said already, Morgan, before he can spread his blankets sometimes. This is one of the places, this is one of the times."

Morgan thought it over, hands on his thighs, head bent a little, eyes on his boots, conscious that the girl was watching him anxiously, as one on trial at the bar watches a doubtful jury when counsel makes the last appeal.

"There's a lot of logic in what you say," Morgan admitted; "it ought to appeal to a man big enough, confident enough, to undertake and put the job through."

He looked up suddenly, answering directly Rhetta Thayer's anxious, expectant, appealing brown eyes. "For if he should fail, bungle it, and have to throw down his hand before he'd won the game, it would be Katy-bar-the-door for that man. He'd have to know how far the people of this town wanted him to go before starting, and there's only one boundary--the limit of the law. If they want anything less than that a man had better keep hands off, for anything like a compromise between black and white would be a fizzle."

Rhetta nodded, her bosom quivering with the pounding of her expectant heart, her throat throbbing, her hands clenched as if she held on in desperate hope of rescue. Judge Thayer said no more. He sat watching Morgan's face, knowing well when a word too many might change the verdict to his loss.

"The question is, how far do they want a man to go in the regeneration of Ascalon? How many are willing to put purity above profit for a while?

Business would suffer; it would be as dead here as a gra.s.shopper after a prairie fire while readjustment to new conditions shaped. It might be a year or two before healthy legitimate trade could take the place of this flashy life, and it might never rebound from the operation. A man would want the people who are calling for law and order here to be satisfied with the new conditions; he wouldn't want any whiners at the funeral."

"New people would come, new business would grow, as soon as the news got abroad that a different condition prevailed in this town," Judge Thayer said. "I can satisfy you in an hour that the business men want what they're demanding, and will be satisfied to take the risk of the result."

"I came out here to farm," Morgan said, unwilling to put down his plans for a questionable and dangerous service to a doubtful community.

"There'll not be much sod broken between now and late fall, from the present look of things," the judge said. "We've had the longest dry spell I've ever seen in this country--going on four weeks now without a drop of rain. It comes that way once every five or seven years, but that also happens back in Ohio and other places men consider especially favored," he hastened to conclude.

"I didn't intend to break sod," Morgan reflected, "a man couldn't sow wheat in raw sod. That's why I wanted to look at that claim down by the river."

"It will keep. Or you could buy it, and hire your crop put in while you're marshal here in town."

"And I could edit the paper. Between us we could save the county seat."

Rhetta spoke quite seriously, so seriously, indeed, that her father laughed.

"I had forgotten all about saving the county seat--I was considering only the soul of Ascalon," he said.

"If you refuse to let father swear you in, Mr. Morgan, Craddock will say you were afraid. I'd hate to have him do that," said Rhetta.

"He might," Morgan granted, and with subdued voice and thoughtful manner that gave them a fresh rebound of hope.

And at length they had their will, but not until Morgan had gone the round of the business men on the public square, gathering the a.s.surance of great and small that they were weary of bloodshed and violence, notoriety and unrest; that they would let the bars down to him if he would undertake cleaning up the town, and abide by what might come of it without a growl.

When they returned to Judge Thayer's office Morgan took the oath to enforce the statutes of the state of Kansas and the ordinances of the city of Ascalon, Rhetta standing by with palpitating breast and glowing eyes, hands behind her like a little girl waiting her turn in a spelling cla.s.s. When Morgan lowered his hand Rhetta started out of her expectant pose, producing with a show of triumph a short piece of broad white ribbon, with CITY MARSHAL stamped on it in tall black letters.

Judge Thayer laughed as Morgan backed away from her when she advanced to pin it on his breast.

"I set up the type and printed it myself on the proof press," she said, in pretty appeal to him to stand and be hitched to this sign of his new office.

"It's so--it's rather--prominent, isn't it?" he said, still edging away.

"There isn't any regular shiny badge for you, the great, grisly Mr.

Craddock wore away the only one the town owns. Please, Mr.

Morgan--you'll have to wear _something_ to show your authority, won't he, Pa?"

"It would be wiser to wear it till I can send for another badge, Morgan, or we can get the old one away from Seth. Your authority would be questioned without a badge, they're strong for badges in this town."

So Morgan stood like a family horse while Rhetta pinned the ribbon to the pocket of his dingy gray woolen shirt, where it flaunted its unmistakable proclamation in a manner much more effective than any police shield or star ever devised. Rhetta pressed it down hard with the palm of her hand to make the stiff ribbon a.s.sume a graceful hang, so hard that she must have felt the kick of the new officer's heart just under it. And she looked up into his eyes with a glad, confident smile.

"I feel safe _now_," she said, sighing as one who puts down a wearing burden at the end of a toilsome journey.

CHAPTER XIII

THE HAND OF THE LAW

The stars came out over a strange, silent, astonished, confounded, stupefied Ascalon that night. The wolf-howling of its revelry was stilled, the clamor of its obscene diversions was hushed. It was as if the sparkling tent of the heavens were a great bowl turned over the place, hushing its stridulous merriment, stifling its wild laughter and dry-throated feminine screams.

The windows of Peden's hall were dark, the black covers were drawn over the gambling tables, the great bar stood in the gloom without one priest of alcohol to administer the hilarious rites across its glistening altar boards.

As usual, even more than usual, the streets around the public square were lively with people, coming and pa.s.sing through the beams of light from windows, smoking and talking and idling in groups, but there was no movement of festivity abroad in the night, no yelping of departing rangers. It was as if the town had died suddenly, so suddenly that all within it were struck dumb by the event.

For the new city marshal, the interloper as many held him to be, the tall, solemn, long-stepping stranger who carried a rifle always ready like a man looking for a coyote, had put the lock of his prohibition on everything within the town. Everything that counted, that is, in the valuation of the proscribed, and the victims who came like ephemera on the night wind to scorch and shrivel and be drained in their bright, illusive fires. The law long flouted, made a joke of, despised, had come to Ascalon and laid hold of its alluring inst.i.tutions with stern and paralyzing might.

Early in the first hours of his authority the new city marshal, or deputy marshal, to be exact, had received from unimpeachable source, no less than a thick volume of the statutes, that the laws of the state of Kansas, which he had sworn to enforce, prohibited the sale of intoxicating liquors; prohibited gambling and games of chance; interdicted the operation of immoral resorts--put a lock and key in his hand, in short, that would shut up the ribald pleasures of Ascalon like a tomb. As for the ordinances of the city, which he also had obligated himself to apply, Morgan had not found time to work down to them. There appeared to be authority in the thick volume Judge Thayer had lent him to last Ascalon a long time. If he should find himself running short from that source, then the city ordinances could be drawn upon in their time and place.

Exclusive of the mighty Peden, the other traffickers in vice were inconsequential, mere retailers, hucksters, peddlers in their way. They were as vicious as unquenchable fire, certainly, and numerous, but small, and largely under the patronage of the king of the proscribed, Peden of the hundred-foot bar.

And this Peden was a big, broad-chested, muscular man, whose neck rose like a mortised beam out of his shoulders, straight with the back of his head. His face was handsome in a bold, shrewd mold, but dark as if his blood carried the taint of a baser race. He went about always dressed in a long frock coat, with no vest to obscure the spread of his white shirt front; low collar, with narrow black tie done in exact bow; broad-brimmed white sombrero tilted back from his forehead, a cigar that always seemed fresh under his great mustache.

This mustache, heavy, black, was the one sinister feature of the man's otherwise rather open and confidence-winning face. It was a cloud that more than half obscured the nature of the man, an ambush where his pa.s.sions and dark subterfuges lay concealed.

Peden had met the order to close his doors with smiling loftiness, easy understanding of what he read it to mean. Astonished to find his offer of money silently and sternly ignored, Peden had grown contemptuously defiant. If it was a bid for him to raise the ante, Morgan was starting off on a lame leg, he said. Ten dollars a night was as much as the friendship of any man that ever wore the collar of the law was worth to him. Take it or leave it, and be cursed to him, with embellishments of profanity and debas.e.m.e.nt of language which were new and astonishing even to Morgan's sophisticated ears. Peden turned his back to the new officer after drenching him down with this deluge of abuse, setting his face about the business of the night.

And there self-confident defiance, fattened a long time on the belief that law was a thing to be sneered down, met inflexible resolution. The subst.i.tute city marshal had a gift of making a few words go a long way; Peden put out his lights and locked his doors. In the train of his darkness others were swallowed. Within two hours after nightfall the town was submerged in gloom.

Threats, maledictions, followed Morgan as he walked the round of the public square, rifle ready for instant use, pistol on his thigh. And the blessing of many a mother whose sons and daughters stood at the perilous crater of that infernal pit went out through the dark after him, also; and the prayers of honest folk that no skulking coward might shoot him down out of the shelter of the night.

Even as they cursed him behind his back, the outlawed sneered at Morgan and the new order that seemed to threaten the world-wide fame of Ascalon. It was only the brief oppression of transient authority, they said; wait till Seth Craddock came back and you would see this range wolf throw dust for the timber.

They spoke with great confidence and kindling pleasure of Seth's return, and the amusing show that would attend his resumption of authority. For it was understood that Seth would not come alone. Peden, it was said, had attended to that already by telegraph. Certain handy gun-slingers would come with him from Kansas City and Abilene, friends of Peden who had made reputations and had no scruples about maintaining them.

As the night lengthened this feeling of security, of pleasurable antic.i.p.ation, increased. This little break in its life would do the town good; things would whirl away with recharged energy when the doors were opened again. Money would simply acc.u.mulate in the period of stagnation to be thrown into the mill with greater abandon than before by the fools who stood around waiting for the show to resume.

And the spectacle of seeing Seth Craddock drive this simpleton clear over the edge of the earth would be a diversion that would compensate for many empty days. That alone would be a thing worth waiting for, they said.

Time began to walk in slack traces, the heavy wain of night at its slow heels, for the dealers and sharpers, mackerels and frail, spangled women to whom the open air was as strange as sunlight to an earthworm. They pa.s.sed from malediction and muttered threat against the man who had brought this sudden change in their accustomed lives, to a state of indignant rebellion as they milled round the square and watched him tramp his unending beat.

A little way inside the line of hitching racks Morgan walked, away from the thronged sidewalk, in the clear where all could see him and a shot from some dark window would not imperil the life of another. Around and around the square he tramped in the dusty, hoof-cut street, keeping his own counsel, unspeaking and unspoken to, the living spirit of the mighty law.